Just picked up my brand spanking new ML CTX 3030 and looking for tips to get started in the two different areas:

trashy san diego parks and dirt fields near schools and old buildings
dry salt water beach sand
wet salt water beach
shallow salt water

I am still learning the menus and reviewing the manuals. I have the smaller coil and larger coil. Also have a wand to help once the target area is dug and a scooper and dig tool. It is a complex MD but I am excited to try it out and find cool stuff.

Read and then re-read. I've had the CTX for less than 3months but pulled 34g of 14k on my first 5day beach trip. Hope you get the help your looking for man the CTX is a great machine once you start to understand how it works!

I will recommend the 17"x13" coil for wet sand hunting, you cover 2-3times as much ground in the same amount of time!

For parks, schools, and old buildings with lots of trash, try Bill's Trashy Park pattern (1st image below). It will get you most US coins and some jewelry, but should knock out most junk items which will be helpful until you get used to your new detector.

For areas that have a lot of iron junk mixed with good targets, try Combined mode with your tone bins set up however you like (2nd image below), Ferrous-Coin separation, Fast ON, Deep OFF. Swing speed should be very slow when hunting in trash. Whenever you think you're going slow enough, slow down some more. If you get a broken hit or high tone, narrow your swing down to just a wiggle so that you can isolate it.. Move in a circle around the target, barely wiggling the coil where you got the tone.. See if you can get it to repeat. Even broken signals can be good targets masked by junk. To help rule out falsing iron, pay attention to where the target pinpoints. A good target should pinpoint in the same location that you heard the high tone. Falsing iron will usually pinpoint off to the side.

Awesome thanks! I will order the book and try these settings out. Probably hit local parks by my house to get a handle on the basics and then few local beaches. I have the standard 11" DD coil that came with the machine and the much larger 17" coil for the CTX.

^ Get Andy's book. Read it. Detect, reflect and reread the book. I did this my first 10 times out. Now that I have had the machine a little over a month I just took the book out and read it again. I am still playing with my settings.

Just use the default settings the first few times out. They are actually pretty good. For example I mostly use a modified version of the standard beach setting that came with the machine.

Play with manual vs auto sensitivity. Do some tests at your house to see what response you prefer, pinpoint you prefer, tones you prefer, volume, threshold etc. A lot of this comes down to personal preference.

I would hold off on the GPS until you get your other settings in a good place.

Thanks I should get the book tomorrow. Just back from first time using it in park and very fun! Found penny and junk but more of test run to learn how to use the basic functions than anything else. I did get a weird overload error message near trash can but just reset the detector and ground balance again. I'll try beach next.